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Add to SafariWhen comparing ExtJS vs Mithril, the Slant community recommends Mithril for most people. In the question“What are the best client-side JavaScript MV* frameworks?” Mithril is ranked 6th while ExtJS is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Mithril is:
Most other frameworks either offer a huge API to deal with model and view synchronization, or defer to other libraries & plugins to cater for relatively simple use cases. Mithril's API is tiny but complete. The natural reaction is to assume something is missing, but as you build you realise you incredibly fast, powerful and rich applications can be built using nothing but Mithril.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Provides built in support for UI widgets
Huge amount of widgets available, also easy to build custom widgets by extending the available components.
Pro Professional support available
If you buy a license you can get professional support and premium forums. Support has short contact times and solutions are of great value.
Pro Well documented
ExtJS' documentation is very detailed and helpful. All concepts and parts of the framework are thoroughly explained.
Pro IDE plugins available
Plugins are available for JetBrains, Eclipse and Visual Studio.
Pro Easy reusability of code
By using the packages and custom components, code can be reused very simply.
Pro Flat learning curve
Anyone with basic JavaScript knowledge can start using this framework.
Pro Forum support
Forum support is available.
Pro Excellent design tools
Eg: Sencha Architect.
Pro Developer friendly integrated tools
Sencha Cmd, Sencha Inspector and some IDE plugins etc., are the tools which helps developers to speed up their development.
Pro Small, easy to learn API
Most other frameworks either offer a huge API to deal with model and view synchronization, or defer to other libraries & plugins to cater for relatively simple use cases. Mithril's API is tiny but complete. The natural reaction is to assume something is missing, but as you build you realise you incredibly fast, powerful and rich applications can be built using nothing but Mithril.
Pro Fast rendering
Mithril's loading times are very fast. This is because it's templates are compiled first and then served to the browser and because it uses a virtual DOM. The virtual DOM is a virtual tree containing all the nodes of the real DOM, every time anything changes in the virtual DOM, Mithril does not re-render the entire (real) DOM, instead it just searches and applies the differences.
Pro No need to learn another syntax to write views
Most MVC frameworks use HTML templates to render their views. They are good and useful because they are easy to read and understand. But they add more complication to an app because it's practically a new language and syntax that needs to be learned.
Mithril argues that separating markup from logic is just a separation of technologies and not concerns, so you can write Mithril views in JavaScript. Writing them in JavaScript also makes it easier to debug them (HTML templates can't be debugged).
Pro Familiar to people used to MVC
Doesn't lock you into any complicated conventions or structures, only one function is required to create either a Controller or a View. You're free to implement your architecture exactly as you want, so you can focus on the purpose of MVC, making connections between computer data and stuff in the end user's head.
Pro Small size
Weights just 8Kb gzipped and has no dependencies. A reactive stream module can be added for one extra Kb.
Pro Great documentation
Mithril has a large and expansive documentation despite it's relatively small API. Mithril's GitHub repo has more documentation than actual source code. None of that documentation is auto-generated
Pro Allows a smooth transition from other UI frameworks
One thing you need to start using Mithril is just a DOM node. With Mithril a developer is able to introduce the library step by step.
Pro Allows you to choose which JavaScript libraries to integrate in your project
Mithril gives to the developer the flexibility to chose the best JavaScript library to use for a specific task.
A huge framework like Angular instead forces you to use their API, which does not necessarily evolve as fast as the JavaScript ecosystem. Therefore you may end up in case when you are stuck using an API which is just not the best in terms of performance
Pro Can be used without build systems
It's plain old JavaScript, can be used without webpack, gulp or grunt, just include it into your HTML and start writing your app.
Pro Does not force you into a predefined structure
Mithril's API is pretty small compared to other frameworks. It forces developers to solve problems in JavaScript rather than in Mithril. Other frameworks with massive APIs force you to think in a way that suits the framework. Mithril doesn't do that.
Cons
Con Completely unreliable with regard to licensing and pricing
That ExtJs is expensive is not the problem, but what they did is started completely free, then switched the licensing model when they had profited from the community. Also, they suddenly switched from a single user license to a minimum of 5 users.
Con License
Ext-JS is not for free, it comes with a license.
Con Large footprint
The library is almost 500Kb in size hence significantly affects your page load time.
Con Expensive licensing
ExtJS is free for use in open source projects, but you have to use the unstable version which is riddled with bugs. Furthermore, to build a project (even if it's open source), you have to buy their proprietary tools.
For commercial projects, it costs $665 for a license.
Con No real support
You only get a limited premium questions that could be answered via the support and if the issue is too large then you might lose all your credits (it has a credit system for support) in one question.
In addition the replies in premium forum are sometimes less thought of than you would get in stackoverflow.
Con Lots of bugs
The community is very small and this is because the licencing is very expensive. Therefore not many people to test the framework and give feedback in order to fix.
They try to do everything in house which means that a small company (linkedin shows about 100 employees) tries to imitate something very large.
The scaling problems lead to lots of bugs and instability.
Con No web-workers
ExtJS does not take into account the asynchronous nature of todays web browsers where you can do heavy stuff on the background.
Con Tooling is poor
They had a GUI architect tool, but that tool never was up to date with the current framework version. Now they even seem to have abandoned the whole architect app. Also, to build a ExtJs app you have to use their tool (and then you have to pay, from that moment ExtJs is no longer GPL). But this tool also has lots of bugs.
Con Steep learning curve
ExtJs is a very opinionated framework. You have to do it the ExtJs way or it's the highway. So, a lot of time, things in your own opinion doesn't make sense or don't work in the way you expect it.
Con Quantity yes, quality no
There is a large amount of source code that can be useful and indeed all the samples works flawlessly.
When you try to get into more complex scenarios you will find yourself in situations where things just do not work as expected. You will have to do manual work.
Con Small API can make it unsuitable for larger more complex projects
Mithril's small API and small number of functions while helpful for small projects and applications where speed is needed, can add another layer of complexity in larger more complex applications where a more extensive API is needed out of the box.
